Collective action and individual choice: rethinking how we regulate narcotics and antibiotics.
Abstract
Governments across the globe have squandered treasure and imprisoned millions of their
own citizens by criminalising the use and sale of recreational drugs. But use of these
drugs has remained relatively constant, and the primary victims are the users themselves.
Meanwhile, antimicrobial drugs that once had the power to cure infections are losing
their ability to do so, compromising the health of people around the world. The thesis
of this essay is that policymakers should stop wasting resources trying to fight an
unwinnable and morally dubious war against recreational drug users, and start shifting
their attention to the serious threat posed by our collective misuse of antibiotics.
Type
Journal articleSubject
AutonomyCoercion
Criminal Law
Drugs and Drug Industry
Public Policy
Anti-Bacterial Agents
Choice Behavior
Drug Resistance, Microbial
Drug and Narcotic Control
Freedom
Government Regulation
Humans
Public Health
Street Drugs
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/8372Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1136/medethics-2012-101160Publication Info
Anomaly, Jonny (2013). Collective action and individual choice: rethinking how we regulate narcotics and
antibiotics. J Med Ethics, 39(12). pp. 752-756. 10.1136/medethics-2012-101160. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/8372.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Jonathan Anomaly
Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science
I work mostly on issues at the intersection of ethics and economics, including how
we should respond to the under-consumption of vaccines and the over-consumption of
antibiotics, and whether the market for biomedical enhancements should be regulated
in any way. More generally, my research focuses on collective action problems. I
recently co-edited the first major <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/philosophy-politics-and-economics-9780190207311?cc=us&lang=en&a
This author no longer has a Scholars@Duke profile, so the information shown here reflects
their Duke status at the time this item was deposited.

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